From the Field:

Another nesting season nearly complete

Nesting Success Research 

July 15th, 2009

As we enter mid-July, nesting activity is winding down across our study sites and our research crews finished the last of their searching for nests today. They will continue to monitor the remaining nests for the next couple of weeks as the fate of the remaining nests is determined. At this point, female ducks that successfully hatched a nest are busy attending to their broods of ducklings. Scattered thunderstorms have continued to roll across the prairies of the Dakotas, dumping several inches of rain in localized areas which only serves to improve excellent wetland conditions across the landscape. When driving through the Coteau now, broods can be seen on many wetlands; the result of production from earlier hatched nests. With 800 hatched nests for the year, all indications are that nesting success overall was quite good for the ducks that bred across our research sites. And the excellent wetland conditions that exist across the Dakotas should yield excellent brood survival resulting in a very good fall population. We have one study site (Lostwood site 8) that is especially noteworthy this year. This site is one dominated by large blocks of CRP and to date this year a whopping 103 nests have hatched with another 32 nests still active. This site demonstrates the fact that when expansive grassland is maintained and wetland basins remain intact, ducks can generate an amazing response to good wetland conditions. The sites hatching the most nests at the other crew areas would include Woodworth Site 24 (49 hatched nests) and Goebel Site 41 (92 hatched nests).

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released their report (2009 Waterfowl Status) on the number of breeding pairs of ducks surveyed across the key breeding areas in North America. The total number of ducks was 42.0 million birds which is an increase of 13% from last year and 25% above the long-term average. The pond count across the mid-continent breeding areas was also up by 45% indicating the overall improved wetland conditions across the board but the wettest conditions clearly exist in the U.S. prairies this year.

What is important to keep in mind is that improved wetland conditions are cause for celebration and part of the natural cycle that ducks have responded to for thousands of years. What is of far greater concern is the threats to habitats that currently exist. We continue to see conversion of native grassland to cropland, hundreds of thousands of acres of CRP are expiring and being converted back to cropland and wetlands embedded in cropland are being drained and otherwise degraded. The loss of these critical habitat components has the ultimate effect of functioning like permanent drought as when wetland are drained they don’t fill when run-off occurs or even if the wetlands remain intact breeding success is reduced in landscape where only fragments of grassland remain. We will need the help of everyone across the continent to get involved if we are to maintain the habitat we currently have and continue to see fall flights of large numbers of ducks like we anticipate this year.

We hope you will continue to follow along with our work as we gather finalize the information from the 2009 nesting season. Once complete we will provide a season-end wrap-up report on exactly how the birds fared. Stay tuned for that.